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![handle is hein.slavery/ssactsengr0118 and id is 1 raw text is: ANNE (THIE) [1810]
King's Advocate [Sir Christopher Robinson] and Stephen-objected, that this was
in fact a trade from an enemy's port to a port not his own, and therefore the master
had attempted a trade which, ever since the year 1794, had been declared illegal.
To the representation of the mer-[5]-chants of South Carolina to the American
government, requesting that time might be given them to perfect engagements
already entered into in this traffic, since if these vessels should not be able to arrive
in time in America they could not, as the law stood with respect to the foreign slave
trade, go to dispose of their cargoes at a foreign market, an answer was returned,
that it was intended no encouragement whatever should be given to the trade, and,
could it constitutionally have been! done, it long since should have been stopped
altogether; but that at all events, shippers should be left to undertake at their peril
any voyages where it was suspected there would be scarcely sufficient time to return
before the period appointed by the act. It was remarkable that the master, in
making for St. Thomas, must have crossed the trade winds, and passed the latitude
of St. Bartholomew and Barbadoes. This was evidently a. voyage undertaken to
.procure the best market lie could. In the preparatory examination the master
fraudulently had stated the whole cargo to belong to his American owners, but the
day after, apprehensive of detection, lie corrected himself by admitting that ten
slaves had been shipped on freight by a Frenchman. Further proof could not
therefore be now admitted to distinguish these from the remainder, but the whole
property should be considered liable to confiscation.
SENTENCE-Pronounced against the appeal, and condemned the ship and cargo.
[See note to last preceding case.]
[6] ANNE, DENNISON, Master [Nov. 17, 1810].
Slave trade by Americans to a foreign port interdicted by the act of Congress
1794, prohibiting the foreign slave trade. A claimant for property captured
in this trade, notwithstanding the capture was made previous to the British
slave trade abolition act, bound to shew that he is protected in such trade
by the municipal law of his own country. Application for claimant's costs
refused.
This was a case, of an American ship with a cargo of slaves bound from the
coast of Africa (where she had touched at several settlements of different European
nations, for the purpose of obtaining slaves) to Monte Video in South America. In
attempting to make this port she was captured, on the 6th January 1807, and carried
for adjudication to the Cape of Good Hope. In the Court below, three affidavits
were introduced to prove that Monte Video, which the captor's case asserted was at
that time blockaded, was not in a state of regular blockade, but that various vessels
had been permitted by Admiral Stirling's squadron there cruising, to go up the river
Plata; two were added to prove that the settlement, of Cape Mount, from whence this
cargo was in part or principally procured, was a British factory. The Judge had
decreed the ship and cargo to be restored on payment of captor's expenses, from
which sentence both parties appealed. The case was now argued upon the liability
of this vessel to forfeiture under the American law of 1794, prohibiting the foreign
slave trade.
Dallas for the Claim.-The reason assigned in the claimant's case for restitution,
with costs and damages against the captor, is, that the ship and cargo most
clearly appeared to belong to the American citizen for whom they are claimed, and
were engaged in lawful trade; and there was no just reason for the capture and
detention.
[7] In deciding this cause it will be only necessary to advert to the facts of the case
with reference to the American act of 1794, prohibiting a trade in slaves by
Americans to foreign settlements. This voyage appears to have commenced in 1806,
and concluded by the capture of the vessel in sight of port, on the 7th January
1807. By these dates it will appear that she. had returned nearly a year prior
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